How to Install the Rola Rail Extreme RBE Series Roof Rack on a 2020 Honda CR-V

Ryan: Hey everybody. Ryan here at etrailer. Today on our 2020 Honda CRV, we're going to be taking a look at and showing you how to install the Rola RBE Series Roof Rack. Like most midsize SUVs, they're going to provide us with plenty of room on the inside to carry our friends and family, but really not enough to truly carry all the gear and extra things that we want to bring on our trip.Well that where the roof rack is really going to come into play. It's going to provide us with a area to mount other accessories like a roof basket, a kayak carrier, even a bicycle rack. And that's going to still have all that room on the inside for our friends, all while being able to carry our large accessories with us as well.And in my opinion too, even with no accessories on the roof rack, it actually makes the CRV look pretty good.

It kind of adds that little bit of sportiness to it. And I like how it's not silver, it's not black, it's kind of in the middle, almost like a gunmetal color, and in my opinion, it just blends in really nice.Now the crossbars are going to have an aerodynamic design. That way they're going to cut through the wind a little bit better as you're going down the road. And that's just really going to help maintain that quiet Honda ride.And what's nice about these is not only are they going to work with the traditional clamp-on style accessories that actually clamp the crossbars, they're also going to work with the T track. It's really easy.

Take your coin or a flat-head screwdriver, pull the end cap out, and then this rubber seal pulls up and exposes that T track. So this can also be cut, especially if you plan on permanently using that accessory. So you could slide your accessory in, trim this length, and then put the remaining portion in. That way it'll give you a nice clean look.Now to get access to the end supports, as well as any accessories on your cross bars, we're just going to have these little plastic quarter-turn fasteners, which do the job of keeping the caps on nice and tight, but one thing they don't do is provide any additional security. One option I really like is the locking cores.

And so the way these are going to work is these quarter-turns will pop out, and you'll replace them with the locking cores, which are all keyed alike so it's really convenient. You have one key for all of them. And that's going to provide you with that extra security and that peace of mind whenever you're out and about.To begin our installation, we're first going to preassemble our roof rack. So what we're going to do is take our crossbar, lay everything out nice and flat. And if you flip it over, we're going to have some pieces of plastic inside of these channels, and we can pull these out.

And then what we can do is take our end supports, and the way these are going to work is this little piece here, almost in the shape of an M, that's going to actually fit inside of this channel. You can just slide it in. And we're just going to leave it like this for now, that way we can adjust it and get it in the position that we need. Other side of the cross bar is set up the same way. So we'll just repeat that process over there.Now something I just want to point out, because it's much easier to see down here on the table like this as opposed to on top of our CRV, but once we get this all lined up on the roof, there's going to be a little bit of overhang here, the end of our cross bar, overhang the end support. And so what you would do is these little plastic pieces that we took out of these channels, what I like to do is put them back in, and these will just line back up, push into place. So imagine this being on the car. I'll butt that up to the end of the end support, then just use a pair of snips or some strong scissors or something like that to cut it nice and flush. And then that'll keep everything all sealed up.Other than that, you'd simply just do that same thing for the other crossbar end supports. Now, I already went ahead and installed the rear one, but they are going to install exactly the same way, not only the rear one but the front one as well.So let's go ahead and finish putting the front one on together now.So if you move to our rails, we're going to have to plastic screws. And we're going to need to take those out. And they're only in hand-tight. I'm going to use a T20 Torx bit. Back those out, and then these will provide us with an attachment point for our brackets. Just set these to the side. Now our bracket, you're going to want to install these to where this portion here is facing towards the center of our car and on the bottom side. So it's going to sit like this.So line up the holes in the bracket with the attachment points here. We're going to take the provided hardware. What you're going to do is take your bolt, a star washer, that star washer on first, and then a flat washer. It's going to be the same hardware combination for all of our brackets. We'll just get each side hand-tight, and then we can come back and snug them all down.We can grab assembly here and carefully lay it on our roof. And the way these end supports are going to work, these L-shaped clamps here, what these are going to do is actually go underneath this bracket, and that'll prevent it from wanting to pull up on our factory rail. Get those lined up, and push it underneath there. And now we can work on getting everything centered, and then we can come back and get in everything tightened down.So the first measurement or adjustment that we're going to need to make is that we want our crossbars to be evenly spaced apart from each other on each side of the vehicle. So what you would want to do is take a measurement from the back crossbar to the front. You're going to want to match that number on each side. That way the distance between the two are exactly the same. So to make sure your crossbar is centered, there's going to be a little bit of overhang, not a whole lot, here on our front cross bar, but still enough to set it properly. You're going to take your tape measure and measure that distance, and, again, you're going to want that distance to be the same on the other side.So once you found that center sweet spot, you can come back and completely snug down your end supports. Again, lock up our covers, push them back in place. Again, take your flat-head, turn it up, and that'll put them in that locked position. Now from there, I went ahead and just cut off a small piece, a little easier to work with, of our cover down here for this track. Like I said, we don't have a ton of overhang, but what you can do is push it in and just eyeball the amount that we're going to need, get that trimmed. We'll just pop that into place. We can take our end cap and get that in a position too. So this will just fit right into the end of our crossbar. Push it nice and flat. Again, take a flat-head or a coin, quarter-turn that to get it locked.And that'll finish up our look at and our installation of the Rola RBE Series Roof Rack on our 2020 Honda CRV.

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Info for this part was:

Video by:

Andrew K

Video by:

Joshua S

Video Edited:

Jacob T

Video Edited:

Chris R

Installed by:

Colin H

Test Fit:

Ryan G

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